


Communication Breakdown

by chucks_prophet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood, Blood and Injury, Concussions, Deaf Dean, Heavy Angst, Injured Dean, Injured on a Hunt, Love Confessions, M/M, Major Character Injury, Nervous Dean, Regret, Regretful Dean, Some Humor, but nothing graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 20:19:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13325748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucks_prophet/pseuds/chucks_prophet
Summary: All the sudden, Cas crowds his line of vision, Sam shoved aside. With his hands, he grips Dean’s head. Before he can work his mojo, to both Dean’s chagrin and surprise, he slowly releases his hold with blooming eyes. Dean can’t remember the last time he’s seen the angel’s face so pale. Mostly because… he can’t remember. “What?” Dean asks, instantly taken aback. He knows he said that out loud. He felt his lips move. And his tongue. And the vibration in his throat. “What?!” he tries again, this time louder, to no avail.Hesitantly, he brings his hand up to touch one of his ears. Blood greets his soiled fingertips.He does the same with the other. Same thing: blood.





	Communication Breakdown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shalinabianca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shalinabianca/gifts).



> Thank you to my good friend Shalina for the prompt! <3

“Dean? _Dean!_ **Dean,** talk to me, what’s going on?!”

Dean blearily blinks to consciousness. His eyes are heavy and his head heavier, feeling like a bowling ball being spit out of a ball return, all… wibbly wobbly and such. He tries moving it even just a fraction of an inch to take in… wherever this is. Wherever it is needs to turn the humidity _down_ … he can practically feel his flesh burning like a pig on a spit... there’s even a fire alarm going off. Sam jostling his shoulders only makes him want to vomit, but at least he’s not yelling anymore… even though his jaw’s still slapping.

All the sudden, Cas crowds his line of vision, Sam shoved aside. With his hands, he grips Dean’s head. Before he can work his mojo, to both Dean’s chagrin and surprise, he slowly releases his hold with blooming eyes. Dean can’t remember the last time he’s seen the angel’s face so pale. Mostly because… he can’t remember. “What?” Dean asks, instantly taken aback. He _knows_ he said that out loud. He felt his lips move. And his tongue. And the vibration in his throat. “ _What?!”_ he tries again, this time louder, to no avail.

Hesitantly, he brings his hand up to touch one of his ears. Blood greets his soiled fingertips.

He does the same with the other. Same thing: blood.

Dean’s heart starts to pound. He can feel it, pounding like an unpaid loan shark against his ribcage and inside his ears… but he can’t… can’t hear it. Just like when he glances down, he can see his blood on Cas’s hands… but he can’t hear him say his name… he can’t…

 

 

Dean rolls over and instantaneously recoils. With wide panicked eyes, he snaps his head to the freezing water beneath him. Sam stops pacing in the middle of the cramped bathroom and takes a single stride to kneel at the ledge of the tub, hanging on Dean’s every word like a middle-aged man in the late 1800’s reading the daily.

“An ice bath? Really, Sam?” he chooses as his classic Hallmark miracle words, though the minute they take shape, Dean remembers. Although, he doesn’t remember being half-naked too.

Sam trades what looks like a scoff for the shake of his head as he gestures to the figure next to him, answering Dean’s second, unspoken question. To again, both his chagrin and surprise, Sam’s gesturing to Cas, who’s sitting on the toilet. He forces a small smile, as if to reassure Dean. Of course, that only amplifies Dean’s horror—and the bile swarming up his throat.

He races out of the tub in time to reach the sink. He braces himself against the counter after running the water, but starts falling sideways. Sam and Cas race to catch him, his brother the first to release his grip on him to grab a towel as Cas keeps him propped up, and Dean, even half-conscious, won’t admit to sinking into him a little more than he needs to. Cas’s warm breath coasting along the side of his face is comforting. Knowing he doesn’t _need_ to breathe, but does so for Dean.

The moment’s gone all too soon when Sam’s hands are back on him, wrapping his shaking form in not one, but two towels followed by his famous dead guy robe. Then, he sits him down on the toilet.

Silence falls over them, louder than the mime party going on in his ears. His head still feels a little heavy, but he’s nowhere near slipping into oblivion again—which is a shame, considering today’s turn of events. All Dean wants to do is sleep, forget. Then again, if he falls asleep, he may not wake up, and maybe a few months ago that sounded like a solid plan, but having Cas back, he can’t go down that road.

Then again, he’s going to have to live a life never hearing Cas’s voice again. Or Sam’s. Not that he’d say that to his brother’s face. Dean would play it off as a miracle to “never have to hear his stupid, annoying voice ever again” so he can tune out every random nerdy thing that enters his mind, rather than admit to _missing_ Sam’s stupid, annoying voice and every random nerdy thing that enters his mind. Not only that, but what if Sam cries for help in the middle of the night and no one else hears? Will Sam _die_ because of him—?

Like a stubborn coat rack, Sam lifts himself from the opposite wall—because that’s Sam: always holding everyone else’s extra weight—and nods a little at whatever Cas is saying to him. He leaves the room with his head down and closes the door softly behind him, leaving Dean and Cas alone.

Cas is the first to move, grabbing something off the counter before setting himself on the tub, where Sam was. He’s surprisingly calm as he hands Dean a pen and pad, unlike before, back in the… wherever that was. His brain feels like two separate cars connected by jumper cables. One of the cars is fully functioning and trying to breathe life back into the other, but to no success. He’s sure a few more jolts of electricity will help, like a picture of the obit and the vics, but for now, all he’s concerned about it is communicating—surprise, surprise—in some way, to Cas. He owes him that.

So, he accepts the pen and pad and starts writing, albeit shakily, despite being considerably warmer. He glances up at Cas. His hands are folded where his lap would be if his legs weren’t apart and his eyes reflect Dean’s own face, submerged in the deep blue sea. He’s not sure how he’s never noticed that before, but then again, they usually find themselves in dimly lit warehouses and bars.

Not only that, he’s forced to tune out the noise, especially his own. No more hiding behind a thinly-veiled joke.

(Well, he _could_ still crack one, but he wouldn’t hear the disapproving reception.)

Dean passes the items back to Cas with the single sentence written on it: _I wish I could’ve told you._

Cas barely blinks, leaving Dean to believe he has an old-fashioned typo in there somewhere, but then he’s passing the pad back. **_You already have._**

 _No,_ Dean writes, eyes shining with tears as he does, _I wanted to tell you to your face… even if I can’t hear you say it again._

**_Well, what’re you waiting for?_ **

Dean looks up to Cas smiling softly, like that day Dean visited him in the hospital. That was probably one of the times Cas expected him to say it. Instead, Dean yelled at him and told him to quit playing games when _he_ ’s the one that’s been playing games for nearly ten years.

“Okay,” he says. “So, Cas… I just want to—agh…” Dean clutches his head. Cas’s calm demeanor flickers a little like a blue flame in a fire, igniting worry. “Sorry, I’m… it’s just… I’m not used to… the vibrations in my head when I—agh—speak… it’s… irritating my concussion…”

Cas must sense Dean’s nervousness, because instead of placing his hands on Dean to heal him, Cas takes the pad and pen from Dean’s lap and scribbles something: **_I have an idea._**

Jack smiles and opens his eyes, still holding his hand to the side of Dean’s head. “And he says no matter what… uhm, _profanity…_ comes your guys’ way, he’s going to be there. Not just because you’re family, but because he loves you.” Jack pauses, casting his crinkling blue eyes to Cas. “Not in the Harry and Hermione kind of way, but in the Han Solo, Princess Leia kind of way. He said you’d know what that means.”

Dean watches Cas break into a gummy smile before leaning in to kiss him gently, still careful not to rattle his brain any more than it’s already been. That being said, it’s barely a brush of lips, but he knows they’ll have plenty of time to catch up.

Dean holds up a one handshape in Jack’s direction, signaling for one last pressing thought to be heard. Jack presses his hand more firmly against Dean’s skull, resuming his task. “He also wants both of us to respond to Sam, should he scream in the middle of the night… he doesn’t want to admit that that scares him, but it does. A lot.”

Dean side-eyes Jack with furrowed brows.

Cas produces a post-it from the study room and, after jotting something down, sticks it on Dean’s forehead. Dean huffs a laugh and plucks the sticky from his forehead. What it reads brings a small smile to Dean’s own face. And though it’s on paper, he can hear Cas’s peeved tone as clear as day: **I’ve been watching over you two idiots this whole time, you ass.**

And though he may not hear Cas's voice again, Dean falls deeper in love feeling it against every part of his body.


End file.
